Wow, the 4th Annual GGJ has come and gone. Hope everyone had fun and learned something.

In the end there were 11223 Jammers and 2313 games produced (as of Monday morning) from all around the world There is also talk of this getting into the Guinness Book of World Records.

It looks like we had *two* stealth games off campus for the Jam uploaded roughly within the timeframe, so we got 6 games finished / 1 unfinished total. Coolio!

Congrats to the 3 solo projects that got done and the 4 team projects. I encourage everyone that was @ Collin to try out Slither and The Island since they didn't get to see them presented.

I would like to thank Marshall and Collin College for hosting the event and the use of all the resources of AGDT. It would have been harder to do this without having such a nice, spacious location.

Mad props to Yvonna and the NOS guys (sorry I don't know your names), Girl Scout cookies and Frito Lay (thanks Kevin!) Props to Squirrel and True Thought for opening up their framework for the jammers to use. And a big shout out to Jim Welch the sound dude, for showing up with instruments and computer in tow to provide audio for the jammers.

And most of all, thanks to all the people that showed up. Devoting a weekend to working on a game, (not) sleeping is a feat unto itself.

Reflect on the weekend a bit, see what you got out of it and strive to become a better Jammmer for next year, cause baby, we are doing this again next year!

Adam Hill

P.S.

Please, fill out the survey, so we can figure out how to make this more awesome in the future.

Hey guys, I was at the Jam discussing ideas Friday evening when I had to head out early. In case you were wondering where I went Saturday and Sunday, I was working from home (lame, I know). I finished up my game earlier today but didn't get around to creating a project page for it until now.

To the looping-spacetime-infinite-cylinder team (idea #3 / Squirrel's proposal):

I think things are looking good enough to tentatively say we are Go.

I prototyped some of the core functionality for the world/area/view/etc. last night and things look promising. I published an initial build of the game into our Perforce server (can share directions this morning with everyone on how to access that) under the working title "Reprise".

Had a brief text exchange with Jim Welch (audio dude) who has some ideas to share about tying in a soundscape into the world/journey as well. So far so good, I think.

Not sure what the best way to communicate as a group online & offline is during the session; perhaps a 7-way (or however many we have) Skype chat session? (I am "squirreleiserloh" on Skype.) Open to suggestions.

Was up 'till 5am, just waking up now (9:40am) and still in need of shower/breakfast so I will probably show my face onsite around 10:30am-ish.

P.S. If you're already connected to the Perforce server and want to pull down the (definitely needing explanation) prototype, you can just sync this folder from the repository [only]:
//External/GGJ2012/Squirrel/JazzSolo/Reprise/Run_Win32
That has the latest build (.EXE) and the entire Data folder for the game, i.e. everything you need to run for Windows.

We have 2 digital teams, 1 board game team and 2 digital solo projects. One of the solo projects is using Game Maker and would definitely appreciate the help. We have Max here in the PC lab you could use.

GGJ start tomorrow @ 7AM. So stop by and see if there is game you want to work on!

Hi. I'm on the same boat as Matthew Farmer. I live in Fort Worth and just got off work not too long ago. It's unlikely that I can make it tonight for any significant amount of time. Hopefully, I will be able to be there tomorrow and Sunday.

I really don't have a lot of experience. I am hoping to use this as an opportunity to learn and network with new friends. I'll contribute in any way I can, but my only real contributions are my AutoCad and 3D Studio experience. (neither of which I own) I'm in the process of making my first game using Game Maker 8. I am hoping to gain experience and eventually say goodbye to my job and cross over to my real goals.

For GGJ, is the group working together on a collective project, or a set of individual projects? I only found out this existed yesterday, so I haven't had time to read all of the rules, etc. Anyways, have a great night and I hope to meet some of you guys tomorrow! Cheers!

To Matthew Farmer: I would say that it is better to arrive late than to miss the whole thing. The event is only as formal as we make it, and I'm certain somebody will be able to bring you in on a project.

I have found Assembla to be a great project management site. It uses Subversion. I'm pretty sure it can give you access to a Git repository if you wanted one, but in my experience Subversion has been a lot more straightforward to use.

Once idea that might be fun, especially since so many of us are coming is with our own languages/frameworks that we want to use, is to work together on designing a single game, and then each of us split of to implement it using our own language/framework of choice. It would be fascinating to see how each of us would interpret a single game design, and it would give us the benefit of sharing the art and sound assets.

If you haven't heard of it, Game Maker has been the development tool of choice for years for those who want to quickly prototype a game from scratch as well as commercial quality 2D PC games.

I will be at the jam working on a simple project that showcases the latest version of Game Maker that allows for HTML5 game production. While there are some projects circling around, GM seems to be the only one that is commercially available to use. I am also looking for a capable vector artist and sound/music guy. If you are interested please let me know at emelumadugmail [dot] com .

For all those willing to learn how to use Game Maker, I will be willing to give you all you need. I have game engines, scripts, libraries and a particle editing tool that can have you developing games in minutes.

I will be bringing my XNA engine. This is great for anyone to easily pick up. Easy animations, easy fbx loading if needed, and easy xml loading. My engine includes an amazing particle editor gui for artists or designers to get started right away. I have a data driven tower defense premade and an atypical circular shooter. My engine is probably best used if we decide on a tower defense or an atypical game, preferably with a lot of flare.

Since I've used Perforce at my last 3 companies I'm out of touch with what else is available out there in terms of free hosted revision control services. I used Git recently and found it to be totally acceptable but slightly confusing/cryptic/annoying (since I was doing everything from the command line). If Git has a GUI for windows then that's probably a great option. Otherwise, as I said, TrueThought has a really nice / fast (50MBit) / local (Plano) Perforce server we can use with P4V (the windows visual Perforce client).

I'll also be bringing our company's Jazz Game Engine to share as well if anyone's interested.

It's more of a framework than an engine, per se, but it's commercial-grade and has some really useful stuff for jamming that I personally love. If C++ is your comfort zone (like me), you might dig it as much as I do.

It would help us split off into teams if we all knew what languages/frameworks we are all hoping to use ahead of time. I'm personally hoping to target C#/XNA, but if I'm the only one I would rather go in on a less familiar technology.